The Realities of Research Data Management

The Realities of Research Data Management is a four-part series that explores how research universities are addressing the challenge of managing research data throughout the research lifecycle. In this series, we examine the context, influences, and choices higher education institutions face in building or acquiring RDM capacity—in other words, the infrastructure, services, and other resources needed to support emerging data management practices. Our findings are based on case studies of four institutions: University of Edinburgh (UK), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (US), Monash University (Australia) and Wageningen University & Research (the Netherlands), in four very different national contexts.

Part One: A Tour of the Research Data Management (RDM) Service Space

Highlights:

In this introductory report, we provide some brief background on the emergence of RDM as a focus for research support services within higher education, and present a simple framework describing three major components of the RDM service space:

Education—educating researchers and other stakeholders on the importance, and in some cases, the necessity, of responsibly managing their data and making arrangements for its long-term curation

Expertise—providing decision support and customized solutions for researchers working through specific research data management problems

Curation—supplying technical infrastructure and related services that support data management throughout the research cycle

Bryant, Rebecca, Brian Lavoie and Constance Malpas. 2017. A Tour of the Research Data Management (RDM) Service Space. The Realities of Research Data Management, Part 1. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research.doi:10.25333/C3PG8J